Mrs Muscat seeks lifestyle inspiration at Schoenbrunn Palace – wearing a fabulous pom-pom hat

Mrs Muscat, the Prime Minister’s wife, is at Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna right now, seeking inspiration for her Villa Francia/Girgenti Palace lifestyle.

She is wearing the most fabulous woolly hat with a stand-out pom-pom, and obsessively scrolling through her smart-phone as she does something which is currently outside her experience: stand in line with the ordinary people.

Last Thursday I reported that Mrs Muscat was spotted on a flight from Malta to Vienna with just one of her daughters. They were on their way to meet the other daughter, who had travelled to that city with a singing-group for a carol performance.

The Prime Minister’s children will be missing at least two days of school – last Friday and tomorrow – Mrs Muscat having created a long weekend for the three of them while her husband goes about unshaven and distressed-looking, drowning in a sea of corruption problems now compounded by his chief of staff’s diagnosis of aggressive and untreatable terminal cancer of the optic nerve/brain.